What was he, all the same, to do?
He looked across the box at his friend; their eyes met; something queer and stiff, something that bore on the situation but that it was better not to touch, passed in silence between them.

Well, the effect of it for Strether was an abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his own tendency to temporise.

Where was that taking him anyway?
It was one of the quiet instants that sometimes settle more matters than the outbreaks dear to the historic muse.

The only qualification of the quietness was the synthetic "Oh hang it!" into which Strether's share of the silence soundlessly flowered.

It represented, this mute ejaculation, a final impulse to burn his ships.